PARIS | Getting Tangled in the Hijab

In 2010, many of us watched as the international community plunged into a widespread debate concerning the state of France and its interference in what citizens could or could not wear. The hijab, a traditional veil worn by Muslim women as a symbol of both faith and modesty, became a central player in this discussion of state security. By September of that year, the hijab found itself officially banned from being worn in public spaces across the country.

Political debate around the hijab wasn’t a new conversation in France, however. In September, 1989, three French students found themselves suspended for refusing to remove their hijabs in a classroom at a Creil middle school. By December of that year, the minister of education, Lionel Jospin, released a statement placing responsibility in the hands of educators to decide if the hijab could be worn by students on a case-by-case basis.

As years passed, similar cases began to arise. Cities such as Picardy, Nantua, Mantes-la-Jolie and Lille all saw cases of young women protesting their right to wear their hijab in classrooms, each of which resulted in a student suspension. From 1994 to 2003 alone, approximately 100 female students found themselves either suspended or expelled from middle schools and high schools across the country for opting to wear a symbol of their faith in their own classrooms.

Throughout the ‘90s and early ‘00s, as the state of France wrestled with the political idea of the hijab, the garment slowly began to appear in new mediums, namely the world of haute couture.

While the hijab found itself overrepresented in the media as a sight of alarm for the French state, it was becoming recognized as an underrepresented market in fashion. For decades, haute couture’s biggest growing clientele was situated in the middle east and amongst its diaspora: more specifically, Arab women. In 1989, journalist Nicholas Coleridge predicted in his book, The Fashion Conspiracy, that as the Middle East experienced its oil bloom in the mid ‘70s, haute couture would begin to market itself to a new prospective buyer: Muslim women.

That hypothesis was confirmed in 2011 when Reuters named Arab women from the Gulf as haute couture’s biggest clientele. In 2013, Fortune’s Molly Petrilla described the Muslim population as the next “untapped” market for the world of fashion. DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger, Zara, Oscar de la Renta, Chanel and Mango were only a few of the brand names that began to catch up with this trend, as they unveiled attires targeted towards Muslim women in the Arab world, with emphasis on the holy month of Ramadan. Modesty was beginning to become embraced as an alternative method of style. Even new mediums exploring style and fashion, such as online blogging, helped emphasize “modest fashion” as a developing area of interest for fashion’s biggest consumers.

As the state identified the hijab as a piece of political alarm, and the fashion world developed its newest market, the hijab began to emerge as a signifier of the exotic. In fall 2012, Lady Gaga wore an imitation of the abaya, with a pale pink bejewelled headdress, to a London Fashion Week show. One year later, news broke of Rihanna being asked to leave a mosque in Abu Dhabi while posing in an outfit that resembled the abaya. In September 2015, Christian Siriano featured a mock hijab in his Spring 2016 line for New York Fashion Week. By January 2016, Dolce & Gabbana became one of fashion’s biggest names to release a new collection specifically targeted towards Muslim women with modest wear.

Indeed, the political suppression of the hijab has led to its widespread appeal in new mediums. This leads us to the how and the why of such an increase of political alarm revolving around the religious garment in France leading to such a spark in its attraction. As depictions of the hijab transition from the political sphere to the runway, it’s important to deliberate the relationship between politics and fashion, and how the two are obliquely intertwined.

The hijab and the abaya have officially entered into Western fashion at a time when global Islamophobia is at its peak. The complexities of a piece of fabric has situated itself as a point of political discussion and couture. Getting tangled in this contemporary plight of the hijab should peg the question of how effortlessly a piece of clothing can interchange from the political to fashionable when worn in specific spaces by some bodies versus others.